Michele Furlan
Founder President
AI: mastering strategic thinking
2019-01-25 12:39:25
For years we thought that computer programs could not 'intellectually' compete with us, humans. Then, in 1996, Kasparov was beaten by Deep blue, an IBM computer program. That was the start, and ever since computer programs evolved, beating us at any sort of games. The last achievement on this front happened on December 2018, when AlphaStar (DeepMind) won 10 games out of 11 while competing at StarCraft 2 against a group of professional gamers. Why is this important? Because Start Craft is a strategy game requiring quite complex cognitive abilities, and AlphaStar mastered them all, showing an unprecedented cognitive flexibility. Now, what could be the effect of an AI able to outperform us in taking strategic decisions when applied to the biggest problems affecting our species? Original article: https://deepmind.com/blog/alphastar-mastering-real-time-strategy-game-starcraft-ii/
Michele Furlan
Founder President
Exponential Technologies
2019-01-23 09:09:14
Exponential systems could be quite deceptive. First, when they start, exponential trends don't grow as much as linear trends, which means that it could be difficult for us to detect them. Second, we evolved in a 'linear' world, which means we are good in evaluating linear trends but not exponential trends. An example: we can quite precisely evaluate the distance we would cover if we took 20 linear steps, but not if we took 20 exponential step (e.g., where the distance of our step double every time). In the first case we would be ~20m far away. In the second case, we would be ~ 1 thousands of km far away. So, when under evaluated, exponential phenomena could be quite disruptive. Why is that important? Because most of the technologies we use today seem to follow an exponential trend. A definitely clearer and more interesting viewpoint in this article: https://michaelhaupt.com/exponential-technology-defined-374e2db882b0
Michele Furlan
Founder President
Robot movements: fluidity
2019-01-22 10:08:55